The Leveling

The bartender added that Decker had often bought rounds of drinks for everyone at the bar. And that he was a good tipper and extremely popular with the female waitresses. And that he also sometimes hung out at the Flamingo disco next door.

“Sounds like he was the life of the party,” said Mark, wondering how much of the Decker party-guy routine was a just calculated act—a way for Decker to quickly learn far more about what was going on in Ashgabat than he could hanging around with fusty State Department diplomats—and how much of it was just that Decker liked a good time. Fifty-fifty, Mark guessed.

“Yes, of course, all the time.”

The bartender started washing glasses in his utility sink.

“By any chance was he friends with one of the bartenders here?” Mark wrote [email protected] on a bar napkin. “Or someone who used this e-mail address.”

The bartender frowned and stopped washing. “Alty was another bartender here.”

“Was?”

“He quit around the same time I last saw the Decker.”

“Quit?”

“He didn’t show up for work.”

“Do you have any idea where he is now?” said Mark.

“No.”

“Know anyone that might?”




The Walk of Health, as it was called, was a wide concrete path that wound for over twenty miles through the desolate hills just south of Ashgabat. It had been built at great expense to promote exercise, but except for the one day each year when all government employees were required to hike the thing from beginning to end, no one actually used it. Which is why Mark had wanted to meet there, so that he could be sure that Alty’s brother—a man named Atamyrat Nuriyev—had come alone.

They converged on the path about a mile south of the Eternally Great Park, where the path started. Mark approached from the north—after hiking cross-country to reach the path; Nuriyev from the southern park entrance.

Before speaking, Mark studied Nuriyev.

The drooping shoulders and hangdog look suggested that Nuriyev had no news or bad news regarding his missing younger brother; the cheap domestic suit told him that Nuriyev’s government job—assistant to the minister of culture—hadn’t translated into any real power for him; the plastic digital wristwatch he wore, which he’d probably bought for a dollar at the Tolkuchka Bazaar, confirmed this; the broad flat face and almond-shaped eyes told him that Nuriyev was a native Turkmen and not a Russian transplant, which in turn suggested that Nuriyev had grown up dirt-poor during the long Soviet occupation.

Still, Nuriyev was of average height, so he likely hadn’t grown up so poor that his growth had been stunted as a child. His relatively clear complexion suggested that he didn’t smoke and hadn’t adopted the Russian predilection for extreme drinking. And the fact that he hadn’t bought a fake Rolex wristwatch for two dollars, also on sale at the Tolkuchka Bazaar and popular with many Turkmen, suggested a personal modesty.

It was the watch that made Mark decide he would try being honest with Nuriyev. “Thank you for coming so quickly.” Mark spoke the greeting in Turkmen, with what he knew was a heavy Azeri accent.

Nuriyev had removed his government-gray suit jacket, revealing sweat stains underneath his armpits. His pressed suit pants were an inch too long and the cuffs grazed the ground. Mark was sweating too. He’d climbed three miles to get to their meeting spot, much of it up steep slopes. By now it was three in the afternoon, and the sun was intense. Nuriyev had come straight from work.

Far below them, Ashgabat, hazy and bright, rose out of the desert. A couple of helicopters circled over the city center; evidence, Mark thought, of a security crackdown following the shooting of the Turkmen soldier.

Nuriyev acknowledged Mark with a nod, but didn’t speak. Mark wasn’t surprised. Even in normal situations, most Turkmen were usually so reserved that they made their former Russian overlords look positively friendly—no easy task.

Mark kept both his hands in front of him and in sight so as not to give Nuriyev cause to worry.

After he’d rested a moment, Mark launched into an explanation about Decker, how the cryptic e-mail he’d received had contained the name Alty in it, and how he’d wound up at the British Pub. At the bazaar he’d needed to speak slowly for the merchants to understand him, so he took care to speak slowly now. Eventually, he took out Daria’s phone and clicked open the first of the three photos that had been sent by Alty8. Nuriyev studied it for a moment, but it was as though he were staring through the photo, not really seeing it. Mark clicked on the next one, then the next. “Do these mean anything to you?”

Instead of answering, Nuriyev said, “Alty is my youngest brother.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“He’s only eighteen years old. My family has not heard from him in four days.”

“I see.”

“I don’t think you do.”

“Then explain it to me.”

For the first time, Nuriyev looked Mark right in the eye. “Your colleague shouldn’t have used my brother.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I know these things. Your colleague, he’s a CIA spy.”

“No he isn’t.”